Free Utility Gives Spotify for Mac Global Hotkeys

Spotify, the music streaming service that’s struggling to launch in the US, comes with a nice desktop Mac app that allows you to access the service’s online library, social features and playlists created by you or shared by other users. The app, in spite of its beautiful design and ease of use, doesn’t provide an option to control playback with the keyboard, and if you try to use the Mac’s default media keys iTunes will open instead.

Spotify Menubar, a free utility developed by Life Up North, gives your Spotify for Mac a bit of keyboard shortcut love with controls to trigger play and pause, previous and next track, and so forth. The app runs in the menubar, and can force Spotify to launch on login or open on keybind trigger. It’s really simple and starightforward, and enables you to pause streaming without interfering with iTunes.

You can download Spotify Menubar here.

Apple Launches Subscriptions for Apps

It’s official: Apple has announced subscription for App Store apps. Billing happens automatically through your iTunes account, and Apple keeps 30% of revenue if they bring a new subscriber to the app. If the publisher brings a new or existing subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100%. Publishers can provide alternative payment methods (outside of the app) and login systems for existing subscribers, but iTunes subscriptions must be offered as an option into the app at the same price or less. Plus, publishers can no longer insert links to external payment methods inside their apps. Here’s the gist:

Publishers who use Apple’s subscription service in their app can also leverage other methods for acquiring digital subscribers outside of the app. For example, publishers can sell digital subscriptions on their web sites, or can choose to provide free access to existing subscribers. Since Apple is not involved in these transactions, there is no revenue sharing or exchange of customer information with Apple. Publishers must provide their own authentication process inside the app for subscribers that have signed up outside of the app. However, Apple does require that if a publisher chooses to sell a digital subscription separately outside of the app, that same subscription offer must be made available, at the same price or less, to customers who wish to subscribe from within the app. In addition, publishers may no longer provide links in their apps (to a web site, for example) which allow the customer to purchase content or subscriptions outside of the app.

As for privacy policy, customers “will be given the option” to provide publishers with information, although the use of information will be under the publisher’s privacy policy. Here’s everything you need to know about subscriptions. Press release embedded below.

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Delegate OmniFocus Tasks with Sparrow→

Delegate OmniFocus Tasks with Sparrow

Don Southard created an AppleScript that sends tasks from OmniFocus to Sparrow:

Sparrow updated a few hours ago and brought with it basic support for AppleScript. I wanted to test it out and see what they included so I whipped this very basic script to delegate a task in OmniFocus by sending an email with details about the task using Sparrow.

Very nice. How long until someone figures out a solution for the other way around? Because I would love to export Sparrow emails as OmniFocus tasks.

Update: Ben Brooks shares an updated version of the AppleScript that works with Mail.app and also embeds a link to the OmniFocus task in the message.

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Portal 2 Available For Pre-Order Now

Well after some delays, Portal 2 is now finally available for pre-order for an expected release of April 18th.  Mac users can pre-order the game for US$44.99 on Steam or at selected retail shops, some of which have special pre-order offers;

Special pre-order offers vary at participating outlets around the world and include a variety of dollars off and/or exclusive in-game content for those who reserve the game for purchase before it is released the week of April 18. These include $5 off the full price, exclusive in-game skins for the coop bots (Atlas and P-body), and more.

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“The Matrix” iPad App Creates Video Walls

We have covered several video / app walls on MacStories in the past. From Apple’s app wall at the Moscone Center at last year’s WWDC to the Welikesmall iPod Touch Wall, it appears that developers and hackers alike have been playing around with the idea of turning multi-touch displays into interactive installations a lot. So this new app for the iPad, called The Matrix and available at $4.99 in the App Store, doesn’t come as a surprise at this point. But the result, as you can see from the video below, is quite impressive.

The app can turn any rectangular iPad setup into a video wall. Once installed on multiple iPads (demo video shows 3), one instance of the app will act as a server sending video to the clients, which need to be placed properly next to each other for the effect to work.

The Matrix will cost you $4.99 in the App Store, but I guess that’s a no-brainer if you consider you’ll need at least 3 iPads to get it to work. Check out the video below. [via TUAW]

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Apple To Outsource A4 and A5 Production? iPad 2 With “Enhanced” A4?

A second report from Digitimes this evening suggest that Apple might outsource the production of the A4 chip and the rumored Cortex-A9-based A5 to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, TSMC. Apple is reportedly concerned about leakage of production techniques and specs now that Samsung is directly competing with them in smartphone and tablet market, and TSMC already provided A4 production when Samsung was unable to meet demand last year.

Apple is reportedly looking to outsource the production of its A4 processor as well as the next-generation ARM Cortex-A9-based A5 processor to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), according to industry sources. The Apple A4 processor is currently exclusively produced by Samsung Electronics, and the previous S5PC100 used in the iPhone 3GS was also developed and manufactured by the Korean company.

TSMC declined to comment on the report.

Digitimes also reports the iPad 2 will feature an “enhanced” version of the A4 chip, while the iPhone 5 will come with the brand new Apple A5 processor. A number of reports surfaced in the past indicated Apple was working on a CPU for the next iPhones and iPads, although it is unclear at this point which one will get the new A5. Several pundits also speculated Apple will adopt dual-core processors and implement RAM up to 1GB in the iPhone 5, which will likely come with a universal GSM / CDMA antenna as well.

iPhone 5 To Feature 4-inch Screen?

With rumors about a smaller iPhone floating around since last week, the latest report from Digitimes surely is interesting. According to the publication, Apple might expand the next generation iPhone’s screen to 4 inches, mainly to compete with various Android handsets that come with displays larger than the iPhone 4.

Apple reportedly will change the screen size of iPhone to 4-inch for its fifth generation iPhone to compete with the Google Android platform in the 4- to 7-inch smartphone market, according to upstream component suppliers.

The component suppliers noted that the production lines for Apple’s next generation iPhone have begun testing, and Apple is interesting in expanding the screen size to 4-inches to support the tablet PC market as the vendor only has a 9.7-inch iPad in the market.

A bigger iPhone screen would raise questions on the resolution of the device, which is currently dubbed as “Retina” thanks to its DPI on the current 3.5-inch display. Another report from last week suggested Apple might adopt Samsung’s Super LPS screen technology, which offers greater viewing angles and brightness. Engadget reported in January that the iPhone would come with a radical new design which, if the rumors are to believed, would play well with this 4-inch screen theory. Digitimes has a good track record on Apple’s production chain reports, and admittedly a slightly bigger display would be pretty cool in our opinion.

In the past months, other rumors pointed to Apple building an iPhone with NFC capabilities for easy mobile payments (although iOS-to-iOS communication would be interesting, too), dual-core processor and LTE for a summer launch “at the earliest”. Earlier today, a new report suggested Apple has been considering three different iPhone 5 models with one of them featuring a slide-out physical keyboard – again, to possibly compete with Android devices. Last, the iPhone 5 is rumored to be a worldphone with integrated GSM / CDMA antennas.

Real Page Numbers Come to iOS Kindle App

The official Kindle app for iOS (universal, free) was updated a few minutes ago to introduce a new feature recently launched on the physical Kindles: real page numbers. Page numbers (currently available for thousands of Kindle books, more coming soon) allow you for instance to make proper citations that other people using Kindle can follow along. It’s a very welcome addition to the app.

The 2.6 update also brings Google and Wikipedia lookup without leaving the app, reading percentage for iPhone and reading progress on the iPhone and iPad Kindle homescreen through the list view.

Kindle 2.6 is available as a free update here. The app was last updated in January to add features like multitasking and iTunes file sharing support.